Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 47
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 19
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 2
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 206,219
Get your friends' movie recommendations by adding Rotten Tomatoes to your Facebook Timeline.
One of the longest-running horror film series began with this gory shocker from director Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously produced Wes Craven's classic Last House on the Left. Entrepreneur Steve Christie (Peter Brouwer) re-opens Camp Crystal Lake after many years during which it has been cursed by murders and bad luck. The young and nubile counselors all begin to die extremely bloody deaths at the hands of an unseen killer during a rainstorm which isolates the camp. A woman is chopped in
May 9, 1980 Wide
Oct 19, 1999
All Critics (50) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (21) | DVD (24)
For all its shoddiness, the film manages, just barely, to achieve its ignoble goals -- it delivers what it promises.
The whole film is one of the best arguments for resuming movie censorship to come along in years.
Beware of this infamous, sadistic slasher film.
It hasn't aged well; its nonstyle renders it pretty sedate these days.
Within the dead-teenie realm it achieves a certain classicism
Has there ever been a more unimaginative exercise in big-screen terror?
What makes the movie work is that the slasher genre hadn't been set in stone yet, and some choices that director Sean S. Cunningham makes in the film that work against type.
a campfire boogeyman story designed to do little more than build tension and deliver a few well-timed shocks, which it does with precision and even a bit of artistry
Timed to coincide with the release of its 2009 remake, Friday the 13th was re-released on standard DVD and got its Blu-ray debut.
How do you sum up a movie that's really quite awful yet helped define a filmmaking era?
Whether you want to credit or blame Friday the 13th for its role in influencing modern cineplex cinema is a matter of taste. [Blu-ray]
...a woefully bad slasher flick, complete with an inept cast (including Kevin Bacon in uncomfortably tight shorts); laborious pacing; and an interminable catfight climax.
Friday the 13th set the tone for the modern slasher flick. So you know which film to blame for all those lousy horror films.
Friday the 13th is the one that started them all, but that doesn't necessarily make it any good, does it?
You really have to wonder what exactly made the Friday the 13th series so wildly successful.
Doesn't deserve classic status among top shelf horror greats like "Halloween" and " A Nightmare on Elm Street", but it certainly isn't that bad. The film has some good cinematography and has that old school horror feeling I love that just isn't there among horror films these days, but the script is lacking. If they
May 12, 2008Super Reviewer
Friday the 13th is completely undeserving of the reputation it has held on to for the past 30 years next to Wes Craven's masterpiece Nightmare on Elm Street. That's a movie much more influential to horror cinema. Director Sean Cunningham has unfortunately created "The Last House on the Left" lite, because it wasn't
January 16, 2012
Super Reviewer
| 93% | Mission: Impossible Ghost Protoc... |
| 29% | The Vow |
| 87% | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo |
| 29% | Underworld Awakening |
| 85% | Chronicle |
| 85% | Chronicle |
| 79% | The Grey |
| 7% | The Devil Inside |
| 2% | One for the Money |
| 76% | Rampart |
A History of Dictator Movies
One hub, one place for reviews, list, pics!
Check out the trailer for this L.A. noir!
Behind-the-scenes Hysteria video